Prospective chemistry teachers' perceptions of multiple representation and ability to represent voltaic cell subject

Abstract

The aim of this research was to obtain information about students' perceptions concerning the importance of multiple representations including macroscopic, sub microscopic and symbolic level in chemistry teaching materials, the difficulties in learning voltaic cell, and the ability to present voltaic cell material through those three level of representations. Participants of this study was twenty one students of chemistry education program at the fifth semester, who are taking the subject of school chemistry in the one of the university in Indonesia. The instruments used ware qquestionnaires and interview. They are utilized to gather the students' perceptions about the characteristics of voltaic cell material, the students' knowledge of multiple representations and those representations in chemistry teaching materials, and the rubric assessments of teaching materials based on those representations. This study indicates that the students consider the voltaic cell subject as difficult material. Even though they do not understand the multiple representations, they encourage to involve those representations in the teaching materials. Furthermore, the students' ability of presenting the multiple representations are considered in the low category. They are not be able to apply those representations and associate one and another.